Glorious Snow!

yesterday it was snowing and we got back from a movie and dinner to shovel a little of the snow while it was still falling. here's keith after the shoveling when he was coming inside.


then it snowed all night and now we have around 27-31 inches of snow on the ground in reno!
so here are some pictures from this morning.

I can do it, can you?

dennis can.

can you touch your tongue to your nose?
(i can if i nudge it just a little bit.)

Sobering

(this could possibly be considered as a comment to a post by sarah at somethingepic.com on spiritual warfare, but opted to put it as a totally new entry on my blog because i thought of it before reading her entry and i am not certain that it is of completely the same vein. on the other hand her thoughts help shape some of my questions, so you should read her post first.)

these are some quick numbers i came across. if someone has better information, please share.

afghanistan up to nearly 1000 dead and new deaths rarely get any news time anymore.
9-11 killed just shy of 3,000 (including wtc, all the planes hijacked, and the pentagon).
in iraq there are just over 1,300 american's part of the armed forces killed but over approx. 15,000 civilians dead.

yet all these numbers pale in comparison to the death toll estimate of 100,000 (that's right five zeros) for the tsunami.

what kills people more man's greed (for power, money, or whatever) or nature (which i was always told is God's second book)? what does that say about God? what does that say about what the mission of the church is?

random blog reading

so i read a random blog and found a pretty good story about how stupid people are.
check out more than my luggage and read the entry titled foot(notes) in mouth.

i can't believe that someone was really that stupid.

Helmets

yay for helmets! i love safety equipment becuase it means i can do things i love with a smaller probability of getting hurt.

keith brought home a christmas gift for me today and now i have four helmets (in order of appearance in my life).
1. dirt motorcycle helmet
2. climbing helmet
3. street motorcycle helmet
4. skiing helmet

i used to have a bicycle helmet but since i don't like bicycling that disappeared somewhere when my dad moved to hawaii.

painful meetings

i thought this dilbert was great.




then i started thinking about it and (janell will vouch for this i am sure) this is the exact process that we thesis/dissertation defenders are asked to go through. we are asked to explain things that everyone else (well except the outside person who is there to make sure things are fair) knows way better.

Rose of Sharon

so while we were cutting our tree i picked up some branches, from a previous cutter, to make a wreath or two. i was thinking about the different names we give God and specifically Jesus. one that came to mind is the rose of sharon, but i have never known why. apparently the bible never uses that term to talk about Jesus but since it is in the poetic song of solomon somehow it was just transferred on over to Jesus. also according to that site the hebrew really says something more akin to the meadow saffron.

to me, the saffron fits the song of solomon passage better... even though roses have thorns, the saffron just looks more like a young woman.

Christmas Tree

sunday morning we went up and cut ourselves a christmas tree. we originally planned on 3-4 ft... well none of the trees that height looked that great so we got one that was a bit taller. we got it home and put it in the awesome l.l. bean stand that my dad gave us and it just barely fit. so now we have a beautiful tree that will smell good for the few weeks 'till christmas. i think we'll put some lights on it, but not sure if anything else.

20 yr anniversary...

today is the 20 yr anniversary of the chemical accident in bhopal, india. there was an article by C&E News (American Chemicial Society's weekly mag) about this accident and the regulations that grew from it. This has led me to think about a couple of things.

first off, of course the chemistry industry accidents we hear about, they have results that are either immediate or traceable. a bunch of circuit boards fall off a train and nobody cares; of course most people don't think about the fact that without the chemical industry those circuit boards couldn't be made. some people are calling for the chemistry industry to cut immediately to "green" processes (that is, go to using things that can't harm people if they do get released).

second off, i was thinking about the call for outside regulation of the chemical industry's safety. people assume that outside regulation results in better regulation. today we have what are called MSDS (material safety data sheets) which OSHA requires workplaces to have. Good idea, crappy information. if you compare methyl isocyanate (the stuff released in bhopal) with say sodium fluoride (a low sodium salt substitute sold at the grocery store) you wouldn't really be able to tell that one will almost always hurt you while the other will almost always not. the msds also points out another interesting thing in that methyl isocyanate reacts violently with water (forming a variety of gasses) but the msds still calls for washing with lots of water if you spill it on yourself...

finally, i thought about what training are chemists given to react ethically? two weeks ago i was sitting in on a 1st yr graduate level o. chem class and the teacher was talking about how a particular substances reacted with dna (thus destroying the dna and could kill people. she then used the phrase "make things to help people not kill people." and everyone laughed, like that was obvious, people don't kill people. but i don't think that it is that obvious. chemists are asked to make weapons more effective by doing things like making tracer bullets or more powerful explosives (plastic explosives for instance) but are told not to make chemical weapons. what is a non-chemical weapon? i guess an energy weapon could be non-chemical but in order for humans to handle it it has to be made of something which is a chemical. we also synthesize things to kill insects and pathogens. back to chemical spills, we are told to follow certain safety procedures, but in reality many people skip over them, as shown by many accidents. in bhopal safety measures weren't running properly but people continued to run the plant. there is a general attitude of make do with what you have in chemistry and that extends to safety as well.

i think i missed out in not taking an ethics class while in undergrad.

Camel Infestation

it seems that australia has born the brunt of the problems with animal infestations. there was the introduction of the rabbit, which injured the ecosystem and prompted the building of a very long fence. now they have a camel problem. i wonder if they are going to build a large fence for that.